Quitting Smoking One Last Time (hit me baby one more time)

March 18, 2026

BIG SIGH. Again. I have set a quit date of Friday, March 20th. I am hoping that this will be the last time that I ever have to quit. For the past three and a half years, I have been a smoker again. I hadn’t had a cigarette in about sixteen years, but while camping in September 2022 I thought that I could just enjoy one around the campfire and that would be it. To quote a fierce woman from Star Trek Picard,  “The sheer fucking hubris.” SIGH. To think that I was so confident that I could control an addiction that has been part of me fot my whole damn life. Interrobang me hard, baby.

Wrong! How many times must I learn the lesson that it is not possible for me to have just one?!

I need to have a plan for when I get into massive panic and craving mode. Writing is the most consistent and powerful tool that I have for processing life, so the idea for this ongoing post is that I will sit down and write my way through my cravings.  They are never just physical cravings, usually they occur in moments where I am spinning out emotionally and I need ten minutes removed from the chaos in order to sit quietly and dissociate.

When I am not smoking, I rarely take the time to go outside, which is my preferred place to be; to just breathe and look at the trees and sky.  Yesterday when I was outside having a cigarette, I felt a profound sense of sadness because when I quit I will not be spending as much time enjoying my backyard. Get a grip, fool! There is no reason that you can not take ten minutes to sit outside and just be, as often as you like!

There are so many ridiculous narratives running through my mind about what it means to be a smoker. This is one way in which my a constant overthinking might actually kill me. It keeps me smoking, and after supporting my mom through lung cancer this past nine months I have a new respect for life and physical health. Not all lung cancer is a result of smoking, but the shame of sitting outside the hospital having a cigarette while my mom is inside having cancer scans is too heavy to bear.

The hypocrisy I feel while begging my twenty one year old adult child to NEVER smoke cigarettes or vape nicotine as I smoke in front of her is too interrobangy to bear.

So, on Friday I will wake up and not have a cigarette with my morning coffee. I will rely on nicotine gum to manage the physical cravings, and I will rely on this blog to manage the emotional rollercoaster of life, which has been my downfall each and every time I have tried to quit since lighting that first cigarette in a moment of hubristic weakness three and a half years ago. 

Wish me luck, I will be screaming inside my heart indefinitely.